Posts by paulf

Re: The first little pig built his house out of what was freely available in the cow pasture

The story on Barrons for anyone interested

Re: Bastards

In my experience, Tesco have failed extensively at the whole "Don't piss off your customers" thing. They only got away with it by being the 800lb Gorilla in the supermarket world. Issuing "fines" to people who stay too long in one of their shops is just the tip of the ice berg.

I came to the conclusion about 20 years ago that Tesco aren't just indifferent to their customers, they outright hate them. That's when I resolved to never shop there, other than perhaps twice a year for the things I can't get anywhere else. Any other supermarkets deal with CS questions cheerfully (mostly!) but in Tesco they always pick the most outwardly hostile people to staff the CS desk.

It's interesting to note how Tesco whine about people not using the in store cafes and deli counters (hence closing some former and most latter) without thinking perhaps people aren't stopping for coffee/breakfast/lunch or to wait for someone to serve their slice of cheese because they have to hurry out the door before they're charged £20 to park for 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Worth noting all the Aldis around here (Just outside the northern half of the M25) only give you 90 minutes to shop - but that's more than long enough considering how you get your shopping thrown at you by the checkout operator.

Re: Best choice here

I get wifi calling with Vodafone UK on the jesus-mob. Works quite well but doesn't seem to support switching between Cellular and wifi during a call (not sure if that's a network or Apple issue, or if it's just not possible). No SMS over Wifi that I can see though.

Once the AI ordering has heard your "Big Mac + Fries and a coke" and interpreted it as "Filet of Fish with onion rings and a milkshake", I wonder if they'll acquire this technology to serve the cooked meal, thus eliminating another load of meat bags:

https://twitter.com/davebyrned/status/838846574314852352?s=21 (Sorry it's Twatter but it's the only place I could find this video)

In fairness the article doesn't specify what is included in the $0.1/GB cost Apple reportedly pays. This may include the supply chain to get it from foundry to assembly line. If it doesn't, as you suppose, look at it this way:

64GB of raw NAND is costing $0.1*64 = $6.40.

It doesn't cost $50-$6.40=$43.60 to run a supply chain, which is the point TFA is making! Even if the supply chain costs 3x the raw cost (i.e. $0.4/GB total) that still leaves a $24.40 margin (48.8%).

Certainly the case now, but back in 1995 a friend of mine had a crappy Goodmans CD player that would quite happily play data CDs as if Audio. I seem to recall it was, rather than "a high speed Nine Inch Nails track", more like a ZX Spectrum cassette, but played at acid speed!

Re: Guilty Secret

I had the same problem, an old email account from the 90s which had loads of emails in it I wanted to keep, but without leaving it populated. I did this:

1. Set up the account as an IMAP account in Thunderbird.

2. Download all emails

3. Change the username for the account in Thunderbird to something completely wrong (e.g. paulf@yahoo.com becomes aapaulfaa@yahoo.com). This will prevent it accessing Yahoo's servers so it can't download any more updates.

4. Wipe the yahoo account of all emails etc.

5. With the preserved account user name changed, Thunderbird will let you add the account again with the correct user name so you can have continued IMAP access. This is much preferable to using the web interface.

6. Thunderbird will grumble when it can't access the corrupted user name of the preserved account but all the emails will be there to read off line.

Odd thing about Yahoo is they (or at least used to) charge for POP access, but IMAP access is free and always there, presumably for their App to use?

Re: At werdsmith.

@Tom 7 "And use your fucking bell when cycling down country lanes to warn pedestrians so my dog doesnt think you are going to attack me."

One hundred times this. Cyclists buzzing up behind me out of nowhere are a real menace. Normally my dogs are on leads all the time but I still pull them to the side when someone going quicker wants to pass in either direction (running or cycling). Ring your bell so I know you're coming (especially if you're being a twat and cycling on a footpath*) and SLOW THE FUCK DOWN so I have time to get me and my dogs out of your way (plus kids for those who have them). Putting a bell on your handlebars doesn't make you look like a dork, it makes you a courteous and responsible cyclist.

I'd add to this the common complaint about not stopping for red lights. Near here is a railway bridge with a road underneath: local road with two lanes on both approaches, but single lane + pavement under the bridge, with traffic lights controlling access to the single track section. Most cyclists I see are good road users and wait in the traffic for a green light, but there seems to be an increasing supply of morons who think the rules don't apply to them. They just up onto the pavement so they can ignore the red lights. The pavement is barely wide enough for one person never mind two trying to pass; a cyclist easily blocks the whole pavement and they don't tend to give way to pedestrians, even though they shouldn't be on the pavement in the first place*.

* Cyclists are not allowed on countryside Footpaths, only Bridleways and roads. Also cyclists aren't allowed on the pavement (unless they are under 14 or it's a recognised cycle lane).

Re: What muppet recorded the keytones ?

Not just key tones. When I called Acme Car insurance about my renewal they had to take details of my new payment card. I was asked to finish all questions about the policy before payment was taken as once we started discussing card details they paused the recording. Very sensible idea.

Reminds me of Miranda Hart doing that joke on her show about 10 years ago:

Miranda battles with the automated operator - Miranda, Series 2 Episode 6 - BBC Two

"Tee-ewes-day" "Not recognised"

"Choosday init" "Did you say, Tuesday?"

Exactly this. Tell people something is wrong and you're working on it, otherwise people think you don't even know, let alone care, that everything has died on its arse.

I have some of my email hosted with Claranet and this started causing problems yesterday morning. I checked their status page, but nothing. It might as well have shown the dog in a burning room saying everything is fine (or Frank Drebin saying, "Nothing to see here").

In comparison I also use Fastmail for some of my email. They go down for three hours and IIRC they immediately updated their status pages, and a week later posted a detailed wash up of what went wrong on their website.

Re: only in the uk

This reminds me of an experience I had with the police. I was witness to two operatives committing a broad daylight burglary on a bike shed in the car park of some flats. After calling plod on 999, I grabbed my Canon dSLR and Telephoto lens and started snapping away to capture their antics as evidence.

They were disturbed by a well meaning resident asking what they were up to (I'm sure it wasn't obvious - I regularly unlock my own bike lock with bolt croppers) and decided to scarper with what they had, but the cops were on silent approach and pulled up just as they tried to cycle away. They were cuffed and taken down the knick for a good kicking before signing their ready completed confessions questioning.

Some PC showed up to take a statement from me about what happened. I noted the photos taken and he asked to take my memory card (a CF card with Canon format *.CR2 Raw files). I offered to convert to JPG and put on a CD but no, they had to have the memory card to reduce the chance that the pictures have been doctored. Thankfully I'd already downloaded them all to my computer so let him take it away in the hope of increasing the chance of them being banged up. He promptly lost the card on the way to his car which was returned to me by someone who found it and saw pictures of me on the card (note how easy some random person was able to read the files on it!). Card was duly returned to the cops.

The cops finest technology team at HQ repeatedly failed at every attempt to read the Canon CR2 files. They asked me and I gave them info on how to download viewers from the Canon website (I'm sure Canon UK would have helped had they contacted direct).

One of the crims decided to plead Not Guilty so it went to the local Magistrate's court and I was summonsed by the CPS as a witness. This was several months later and the cops still hadn't figured out how to read standard Canon CR2 files from a standard CF card, so the CPS lawyer was worried he'd struggle to present the case against him.

I'd thought ahead and printed out the whole lot in a big pack of A4. I handed him this and his face lit up with relief. 10 minutes later the Magistrate had discharged me without having to give evidence as the photos were enough evidence to send him to Crown court for a bigger sentence (11 months in the end as the fucker was already out on licence from his previous conviction for being a thieving bastard).

I did get my CF card back but I'm not sure if the cops ever figured out how to read the CR2 files. Good job no one waited for them to. In light of that I'm not surprised about anything in this story, or the comments, regarding browser history cleaning tools and questions about the competence of plod with respect to technology.

Re: One rule for you...

@AC "electronic door locks that you opened with proximity cards. All good and well, except for the fact that it had no override/safety release buttons, nor battery back-up for the locks, with the result that in the case of a power failure, no-one could go through any door."

Not sure if you're in the UK, but if you are/were I'd draw your attention to The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, paragraph 14.2.(f)

(f)emergency doors must not be so locked or fastened that they cannot be easily and immediately opened by any person who may require to use them in an emergency;

The doors you mention don't meet the legislative requirement (even if you could get them open with your handy tool). I know you were talking 6 years before this legislation came into force, but it's worth knowing. At the current "paulf & co" the fire alarm and evacuation provision is, to use the technical term, a Shit show, so I've been doing some necessary digging to check what the law says. In the UK the emergency release for access controlled locks looks like a "Fire Break Glass" point but is green instead of red.

If you were in The Land of the Free(tm) then all good, carry on.

Re: "Companies try to hide behind "Security by obscurity"

If a contractor hits a *high pressure* gas main, he'll be land miles from anywhere the crater where he did it. The only places you'll ever see a trace of his urgent path is where they have to cross rivers - and the security is not obvious.

FTFY - icon because BANG

Re: I'm still confused

If we ever find there's some truth in the long time, and persistent, rumours about Apple migrating the Macs and macOS from x86_64 to ARM, then owning AMD wouldn't make any sense other than securing the ATI graphics stuff*. If Apple really do want to migrate away from Intel processors, and their in house ARM capability can deliver something that provides enough grunt for a desktop, then it makes more sense spending the money on that than the $billions required for an AMD purchase.

*Since they ditched PowerVR for in house graphics on iOS devices I wouldn't bet against them beefing this up over time to deliver something capable of replacing the basic Intel graphics used in low end portables.

Re: The higher the price ...

Revenue? Profit? None of it matters. Just force your latest acquisition to take a loan from some other subsidiary of the single shareholder (registered in they Cayman Islands, natch) that has an interest rate of something usurious like 12% and suck the money out in that very tax efficient way. Why make a profit when profit only gets taxed by the local authorities.

Re: Money...

Not quite crypto but note the binary value on the note, adjacent to his right shoulder: 1010111111110010110011000

This translates to the decimal value: 23061912

His birthday is 23 June 1912. A very nice touch!

[I've seen this mentioned elsewhere so I can't claim the credit for spotting it]

Re: Fat Controller

As someone who has, on occasions, found reason to be trackside I'd suggest that the lack of retention toilets on the original HSTs was a nasty mistake. Someone has to work on and maintain that track you've smeared with your Brown Trout.

Re: Car park

I found a similar story at a partly related attraction, The Telegraph Museum at the former C&W site in Porthcurno, Cornwall.

This was back in 2012 when, at a loose end in the area, we decided to see what was happening and perhaps get some food in their cafe as the weather was somewhat gloomy. The car park was a fiver before you'd even got to the building with no rebate on entry so, assuming an entry cost of around £10 each, I got back in the car and we went somewhere else.

The current story is £6.50 for parking (!!!) and you get a £2.50 refund if you spend at least £5 on entry fees but that's still ouch. I can understand them wanting to stop people parking for free then going elsewhere, and also wanting to encourage people not to drive but it all seems a bit punitive especially as the distant west of Cornwall isn't the best served area bus wise.

Re: Two years

Isn't that a bit like "No Contest" = "I didn't do it, and I promise not to do it again".

Re: So EE can't now tell its customers to upgrade to a cheaper plan if they've opted out?

You must be a marketing droid. "Why on earth would customers not want to hear about our great deals?!"

If I've opted out then I'VE OPTED OUT! If it means I don't get a reminder to upgrade my phone or change tariff that's my problem. The bottom line here, as TFA points out, "the mobile operator distributed 16.6 million messages to customers..., and 2.59 million of these were to people who had opted out of receiving marketing messages via text.", is that people either didn't consent to the messages in the first place or specifically opted out of them. EE knew this and tried to blag their way out by claiming they were service messages which wasn't the case.

Re: Soundbars , meh

Stuff that for a lark, you're not even trying to get the perfect audiological experience.

My BOSE dealer sorted me out with the finest copper free oxygen cables. Only £1000/metre. The purity of that silence is deafening.

Re: You mean, like, Caller ID?

I remember when Orange in the UK had a long term promotion where international calls were 20% cheaper than on a BT landline. That was a compelling offer in those pre Skype-Out, pre MVNO days. That was back around Y2K and was gone by the time France Telecom appeared on the scene a year or so later.

Re: How F***ing Much?

When I was first made redundant (electronics) I got the legal minimum in the UK plus a bonus of £75 for every *complete* year worked. 4.5 years service got me an extra £300 - certainly not even close to a month's salary (or even a monthly mortgage payment TBF). Subsequent redundancies I've been close to, or heard about, at the current paulf&co have involved the legal minimum and not a penny more. I also heard, anecdotally, they were timed to ensure everyone was out the door about a month before the annual bonus qualifying date - so very much a fuck you with knobs on.

In the circumstances an extra month's pay (tax free up to £20k if it's a redundancy payment, and not pay in lieu of notice, AIUI) can only be described as salubrious generosity compared to what some companies do.

Re: Shouty men...

FTA: "Jim spotted a notice stating that "no personnel are to attend an incident during the storm, except if there is a life-threatening situation"."

I hope Jim included this in his resolution text for the trouble ticket raised by the Shouty Man about the phones, and the trivial solution required. Jim did make sure the Shouty Man raised a work ticket, I hope? In the case of a "Bruce" sized storm I'd have wanted that ticket signed in blood before going out in it, but I would as I'm just a whining POM that doesn't like passive-agressive drizzle...

Once I dealt with a shouty man by deleting him from my work system after a volley of email abuse about something where I was trying to help (short explanation: I volunteer for a charity and collate various information from 100 volunteers about 10 times a year) so he no longer received my emails. About 3 months later I got a sheepish email asking if I'd excommunicated him and offering an apology + explanation. Sometimes the best counter to shouty is absolute silence.

Nice to know I wasn't the only one who came to this story thinking it was about Google's Spying-Thermostat-As-A-Service operation.

Re: Tube

If you think it's just stop and go then get along to your nearest heritage railway, pay for one of their driver experiences and show the instructor driver how it's done! Controlling 300 tons of train is a little more complicated than a 1-2 ton family car.

Mines the one with the big bag of popcorn (and flask of weak lemon drink natch).

As for steering - drivers are still expected to observe the road ahead and watch for points that haven't gone over correctly or have failed (think Potters Bar).

+1 Last year the Marketing department at paulf & Co were busy promoting our latest product (with full encouragement from senior manglement) even though paulf, with sterling help from other minion colleagues, were busy with the big hoses fighting a multitude of fires while it was still in the design phase. We then got hosed by senior manglement for not meeting the unachievable deadlines they knew were unachievable when they set them, even though we'd been pointing this out since before Marketing started. We're still trying to get it to work because it was flawed at the specification phase.

I think it is fair to say this will never change and for that reason I request El Reg create a new icon: Quietly weeping in the corner of the design office thanks to Manglement's latest dense decision.

Re: Pointless G.fast...

@ Dr Mouse "I cannot believe you are defending this sort of behaviour!"

I can - I think the AC and probably a few others on this topic are BT shills. Seems to be quite a few down votes sloshing around on any comment that doesn't praise BT for being simply superb in all ways. And yes, you're right - it's classic abuse of monopoly power and definitely not competition.

Re: On the plus side ...

On another plus side - I'm looking forward to a new "Who, Me?" story that I hope will be written once the current PR shit storm has calmed down.

Someone we'll call "Ben" was working for an unnamed online retailer that many had considered long defunct. He'd been tasked with writing a script that sent a "Winner notification" email to the list of addresses in database table.CompWin but actually sent it to the list of addresses in table.CompIn (i.e. those who were entered into the competition). Since this was a relatively straight forward task he didn't see any need to debug it on a test database first and, well, ...

Re: underground dance music niche built around Sir Dave's dulcet tones.

The Floral Dance? How appropriate with today being 8th May!

Re: Monthly sales report

I do something very similar when I go to pick up a print out and find the printer has been stopped for some time due to a lack of paper/toner, with a pile of jobs backed up in its queue waiting to be printed. I usually conclude the owners of those jobs either weren't really interested in having them printed, or they're just hoping someone else will get some fresh paper/toner/etc. In that case I sort new toner/paper and helpfully save paulf&co some money by deleting all those unwanted jobs first. Bonus is I get my print out faster by not having to wait for the other jobs.

Re: It's been years since . . . .

Vermin Media never ask for all their junk mail back either, but I return it all to them anyway, just to be sure.

Re: If Morrisons is liable for what an employee did ...

The current paulf & co do allow employees to put personal items in the outgoing mail and have them franked at the rate prevailing from Royal Mail; BUT employees are expected to indicate they're personal items and to reimburse the company for the postage. This is a big benefit (at a cost to the company of having to deal with the extra franking and cash handling) as it saves a trip to the post office AND we pay the Mailmark Franked rate (where standard 1st class is 1p cheaper than a 2nd class stamp) but it's not a freebie nor could one reasonably expect it to be.

Re: Help! My stiffies stuck in the slot

@AC "Centralised printers"

Good grief - a hundred times this. We used to have 2-3 printers on each floor of the current paulf & co offices. My nearest was about 10 paces away, with 3 more fairly close by. Then we switched to leased machines with a maintenance contract but only one machine per floor. Now it's several minutes round trip via the access controlled doors to the nearest machine (unless you're C-suite, natch) to find out the print job didn't send, back to your desk send again, find the settings were wrong, send a third time and finally get the sodding printout. The only positive is the maintained machines actually have some kind of up time which the antiquated in house ones didn't as no one took responsiblity for replenishing toner/paper. Some were dead with an error message for a week or more sometimes - with a queue of pending jobs (that their senders clearly didn't care about) blocked behind the error

Re: Compton would love it

It'll be easily spotted - if a Tesla is stolen it automatically rebrands as "Edison".

Re: "Although given the NBT was DAT and Minidiscs"

Memory Stick. I still have a 4MB (yes MB) example at home, plus a 512MB in my old Sony digital camera (kept primarily for the night vision mode).

They always loved the proprietary lock in. Even their early digital camera USB cables were their own design - the socket on the camera was not a standard USB so the replacement cables were £30 instead of £5.